Premiere Pro CS6 Techniques: 67 Color 20: Blend Modes 1

In this tutorial, Andrew Devis starts by showing how to animate an effect from the 'generate' category of effects and then shows how to use 'blend modes' to blend a reasonably flat piece of footage with the animated effect below to give a little more life or interest to the shot.

Hello Mr. Devis
My name is Milad Tangshir, I am an Iranian student here in Italy and I am editing my first film now. I must say your tutorials on Premier Pro are priceless. Your teaching process could not get more smooth and pleasing to follow. They mean so much to me, just like being able to follow my dreams. I deeply believe after years they must give you an important award. Because the things you are doing are playing a major part in the upcoming generations of filmmakers; from all over the world, where they don’t afford or find the proper film education. Hats off to you sir.
I got few questions that I would really appreciate if you could find the time to answer to:
1. This is my first experience. (55 mins). The 60% of the footage is HDV 1440x1080 25F. There are also lots of other videos, brolls and footage from interviews and old films in it, obviously with various resolutions and frame rates. The 1st footage I imported was 1280x720, 30f. So this is the resolution of my ONLY sequence which includes my whole film! I know that sounds amateur! So after that I brought in all my other various stuff and for every shot I had to rearrange with motion and position and scale details. Now, I know about nesting and breaking a long project into parts and sequences. Now, if I do it, I have to make sequences (60% of the stuff) in 1440x1080 25f, and I have to rearrange all the shots in the sense of motion, scale and position again. And also I have to make other various types of sequences for various stuff that I have in the timeline. (All with various resolutions).
So do I have to do that or leave it like this? The fact that my complete film sequence is 1280x720 will affect my final result? That’s the most important question I guess. I have to wait for your guidance before I can start nesting and ordering things in there… What’s your advice for my situation now?

2. With fast color corrector, -ALWAYS as a default-, do you prefer to do just the white balance or also the black and gray balances? Or just playing with gamma? I mean as a default way of working…

3. You know for every young filmmaker, getting closer to the film look is a huge objective. So, do you think vignette should be applied on whole project or do you think it’s better to use it here or there as a dramatic effect on few shots? (and the shots that have parts that distract the attention). Do you recommend putting it on whole project?

4. In the film blending technique, do you do this as an alternative to general color correction process? Because in the video tutorial, you work on the raw footage (deleting the mattes and the black video). So it does not seem possible to duplicate the color corrected footage 2-3 times?! Right? If I go for fast color correction, so I cannot do this film blending? and so I will lose that 1 pixel blur that you say helps the look?
Is it either color correction or film blending technique? This is really confusing to me…So when you want to get closer to film look, do you suggest applying this technique on all shots of the film? (55 mins)

5. In this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUddE_A9Jxw) I learned to add to crop of 13% on top and bottom of the image to have the Cinemascope 2.39:1 look. But I did not shot the film with this in mind, do you suggest using it, (I know I have to check and put the important stuff in the shot), but I want to know what is your idea about it? Or any other way that you may know that hurt the picture less…

I am so sorry and ashamed that I wrote so long and asked so many silly long questions, but my film depends on you and how you guide me now…

Premiere Pro Techniques: 110 Preset & Custom Lumetri LooksPlay VideoIn this tutorial, Andrew Devis goes through a new option that will be coming with the next release of Adobe Premiere Pro called Lumetri Looks - which gives you the option to apply .Look files created in Adobe SpeedGrade directly to your footage in Premiere Pro.
While this option at first glance seems to only offer the ability to apply presets already created, there is also a way in which you can create your own grades in SpeedGrade, save them as .Look files and then apply those custom grades to your footage or to an adjustment layer in Premiere Pro CS_Next.
In this tutorial, Andrew shows the new option and how it may be used with SpeedGrade CS_Next to create, save and apply your own custom looks.

Premiere Pro CS6: 68 Color 21: Blend Modes 2: Lens FlarePlay VideoIn this tutorial, Andrew Devis starts off by showing how to add and change a 'Lens Flare' and then how to use a colored gradient to colorize your footage for added interest. Andrew then goes on to show how to use the 'Cell Pattern' effect as a way to add gentle movement below an image to create more interest - because the eye is drawn to movement.

Premiere Pro CS6 Techniques: 63 Color 16 Levels EffectPlay VideoIn this tutorial, Andrew Devis shows that there is a levels effect in Premiere Pro which you may have used if you are a Photoshop or After Effects user. However, the levels effect in Premiere Pro can be both hard to find and hard to use, and according to Andrew, should not be your first port of call for brightness & contrast adjustments. That said, Andrew demonstrates how to use the level effect in Premiere Pro as well as showing its short-comings.

Premiere Pro CS6 Techniques: 65 Color 18: Leave Color EffectPlay VideoIn this tutorial, Andrew Devis shows how to use the 'Leave Color' effect as well as a simple compositing technique to be able to focus on just the item needing to be shown without having to worry about similar colors in other parts of your shot. While the 'Leave Color' effect is powerful, it is also a simple approach which may or may not work for you depending on the footage you are working with. If you are not getting the results you want with the 'Leave Color' effect, then you may wish to use the secondary color correction techniques shown in previous tutorials to obtain a similar and slightly more controllable result.

Premiere Pro CS6 Techniques: 60 Color 13: Luma CurvePlay VideoIn this tutorial, Andrew Devis shows how to use the Luma Curve to achieve very similar results to the Luma Corrector. Both these effects will produce good results for both brightness & contrast although it could be said that the Luma Curve will give some better visual feedback for those who like visual feedback for what they are doing.